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THE HAUNT OF THE MNG-OUZEL 

 (TUBDUS TORQUATUS). 



By C. Teollope. 



Some birds seem to belong to all scenery alike ; others love 

 only the waste common land, the stream, or the sea-shore ; 

 while a third division, ol sxXektoi, are only to be found in one or 

 two favoured counties in the whole of England. Of these last 

 are the King-Ouzels. Dartmoor, the hills of Derbyshire, the 

 Yorkshire Moors, are perhaps the best known of their summer 

 haunts, but there is a little-known nook of Western Herefordshire 

 to which they come with unfailing regularity. There they have 

 entrenched themselves among the wild hills known in the Ordnance 

 map as the Black Mountains ; and there, in the May of this year, 

 I journeyed with a friend whose love of birds at least equals, if I 

 will not allow that it surpasses, my own, to see them at home. 



The way to the dingle which the Ring- Ouzels love, took us 

 first through a country — the country around the foot of these hills 

 — which was curiously like some out-of-the-way corner of Brittany. 

 The small rough fields, where gorse takes up much space from 

 the poor grass; the small fields of hand -sown wheat; the tall 

 hedges, sweet with bird-cherry, with pink crab trees, with yet 

 sweeter may blossom; the brown babbling trout-stream running 

 down the valley ; the white rough homesteads ; the small farms of 

 so few acres, farmed by the holders with slow toil and antiquated 

 methods, and not by hired labourers who must needs bring their 

 work up to the perfection which he who pays for labour naturally 

 requires : — all this had some unique foreign charm, and recalled 

 another country, dwelt in, as this, by dark-haired Celts, who 

 cling with a like dogged faith to their own inherited thoughts, 

 methods of work, superstitions not a few. 



The way to the hills leads through such a country as this, 

 but when the mountains are reached civilization disappears, and 

 spring too, although it is the latter end of May. In the sheltered 



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